Policy & Practice August 2018

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Innovating Child Welfare Service Delivery A Next-Generation System of Engagement

ne sentence. Just one sentence in a five-year-old case file can drastically change the life of a child.

Identify the best placement for a child entering care. Ensure a family gets timely assessments. Uncover a hidden kinship connec- tion. Or simply find someone who can provide a safe place for a child to spend the night. But, since case files can include hundreds of pages of information, including history from past cases, insight contained in that one sentence is often virtually impossible to retrieve. Sometimes, workers don’t even know it exists. Although physically available, critical information from things like court records, emails, medical reports, psychological evalua- tions, and case notes becomes hidden, leading to “dark data.” As a result, social workers struggle to digest and apply the right knowledge at the right time when making decisions. Until now.

By Rupam Chokshi

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August 2018   Policy&Practice